Joey Barton's grotesque outbursts on women are an insult to everyone in football
Joey Barton was once smart enough to appear on the panel of Question Time when David Dimbleby was in the chair and ran a tight, even-handed ship. But even in his pseudo-intellectual incarnation as an articulate footballer back in 2014, Our Joey still managed to crash the car.
Denouncing UKIP as a waste of a perfectly good cross on a ballot paper – and he was right, because the party's leader in 2014 was a serial loser who ended up crawling with the snakes on a vacuous reality TV show set in Australia – Barton addressed the newly-elected MEP for North West England, Louise Bours.
“All UKIP represent to me is the best of a bad bunch,” he said, dismissing the right-wing fringe beyond the political mainstream. So far, so good – but Joey was never far from trouble on the pitch, and in his next breath it came hurtling round the corner.
“If I'm somewhere and there were four really ugly girls, I'm thinking, 'She's not the worst' – because that's all you are.”
Barton later attributed his unfortunate “ugly girls” analogy to first-night nerves on a BBC flagship, but they have not invited him back.
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And it is unlikely he will be receiving phone calls any time soon to appear as a pundit on Match of the Day or Monday Night Football after a series of social media diatribes which suggested he has a problem with women.
Following his sacking as Bristol Rovers manager – where, in fairness, he led the 'Gas' to promotion from League Two – Our Joey has been trying to promote his new podcast with a series of inflammatory opinions about the state of football.
But in a range of flagrantly sexist tweets, Barton claimed women pundits “shouldn't be talking with any kind of authority” on the men's game before comparing their input as the equivalent of “me talking about knitting or netball.”
He went on to complain that British, white, middle-aged men were “under attack” amid broadcasters' “tokenistic” selection of pundits. Satire is truly dead – UKIP would have been proud of your outbursts, Joey.
BBC Question Time featuring Margaret Curran, Piers Morgan and Joey Barton (BBC)To make a complete pile-up out of his initial prangs, Barton expanded his range of onslaught to denounce women as marriage-wreckers in football by sending naked selfies and conducting affairs with spliced players.
Yes, Joey, those naughty women all led innocent, puritan young men astray against their wishes, didn't they? You only have to puke at the evidence of certain recent court cases to be repulsed by the practice of women being treated like pieces of meat at footballers' parties.
To this detached observer, there is an element of sadness about Barton's outbursts against women pundits because, in his later years as a player, he appeared to have mellowed and he was capable of restrained, intelligent discourse. But where the hell did these misogynistic tirades come from? They belong to the dark ages, not the enlightened 21st century.
Laura Woods has publicly criticised Barton's comments (PA)Read more similar news:
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